The concept of Airbnb is simple – you choose a city, look for a particular place to stay there – anything from little more than a box to a whole castle with everything in between, including rooms, apartments and regular houses; after that you submit a request and if the owner approves you, you’re good to go. The interface is pretty polished and quite convenient – I’ve used it myself, although only as a lodger. However, if you’re traveling alone, like some people prefer to, the rest of the summer experiences – you know, beaches, picnics, long nights and like – may become somewhat problematic in an unfamiliar place.
So Airbnb decided to branch out and unrolled a new kind of service in beta mode – dinners with a stranger. The same kind of peer screening process that the lodging service has, protecting users from axe-murderer types and other kinds of unpleasant persons applies here as well, so there is at least some kind of protection against atrocious dinner experiences. And, of course, it’s not limited to dinners. The new feature is called pleasantly ambiguously Experience – Airbnb offers travelers to “get off the beaten path with the Airbnb community.” There are several categories: Eat With Locals, Sightseeing, Outdoors, Food and Drinks and Explore and Learn – so pretty much anything anyone can wish to do in a new location fits into one of those. Unfortunately, for now Experience is limited to San Francisco – and you have to pay for participation, too. Airbnb, just like with other services, plans to take a cut from the amount organizers are paid for their Experiences, including dining. While prices for things like dining are pretty transparent, I wonder how will other, less tangible Experiences will be priced. But I’m sure the “market’s invisible hand” will play its role here – as long as users are willing to pay, there will be someone to provide the supply of whatever it is they’re buying, right?
Well, not if governments have something to say about it. The service, despite – or perhaps due to ever-increasing popularity, often has to deal with certain ‘interest’ from governmental agencies all over the world. For example, in 2011 the New York State Senate passed a law prohibiting anyone from renting out apartments for a period of less than 30 days. In other jurisdictions Airbnb was involved in investigations regarding things like taxation and renters’ security.
By the way, there’s also an attempt to popularize whole crowdsourcing experiences thing in Russia. The website, initially located at sptnik.com, now at sputnik8.com, is called “Sputnik”, or “Fellow traveler”. The service has proven to be somewhat successful in St. Petersburg. Basically, this is a crowdsourcing service, allowing anyone to become a travel guide. In a nutshell, each user indicates spoken languages and posts personal tours, which can then be booked by visitors; naturally, there’s a review system. Currently it offers a little shy of 1300 “experiences by local guides” in Russia, Ukraine, Thailand and other locations, with a seeming emphasis on the English-speaking traveler. So if you’re visiting these countries, I strongly suggest you check it out!
